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Topic: Gay-related immune deficiency (Read 3371 times)

The origin of AIDS and HIV has puzzled scientists ever since the illness first came to light in the early 1980s. For over twenty years it has been the subject of fierce debate and the cause of countless arguments, with everything from a promiscuous flight attendant to a suspect vaccine programme being blamed. So what is the truth? Just where did AIDS come from?

The first recognised cases of AIDS occurred in the USA in the early 1980s (more about this period can be found on our History of AIDS page). A number of gay men in New York and California suddenly began to develop rare opportunistic infections and cancers that seemed stubbornly resistant to any treatment. At this time, AIDS did not yet have a name, but it quickly became obvious that all the men were suffering from a common syndrome.

The discovery of HIV, the Human Immunodeficiency Virus, was made soon after. While some were initially resistant to acknowledge the connection (and indeed some remain so today), there is now clear evidence to prove that HIV causes AIDS. So, in order to find the source of AIDS, it is necessary to look for the origin of HIV, and find out how, when and where HIV first began to cause disease in humans.

HIV is most easily passed by gay men because the act of anal sex causes tearing in the anus, which leads to a much more effective bodily transmission. Blood and semen exchange more readily that way. Far more readily than in heterosexual sex. It can still be spread by heterosexual sex, however.

None of that has the slightest bit to do with what caused it in the first place. You are confusing the population in which it spread most rapidly with the origin of the condition here. This would be like saying the bubonic plague was caused by people who live close to each other in poor hygienic conditions, when in reality it started with rats, and fleas bit the rats, and then they bit the people. Living close to someone with it is how it spread after that.

I still don't understand what you mean when you say they caused it. Are you saying that the act of loving another person of the same sex somehow spawned a deadly virus? Or that the act of homosexual sex somehow created it?

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Whenever events that are purported to occur in our best interest are as numerous as the events that will just as soon kill us, then intent is hard, if not impossible to assert. NDT

When affluent, urban gay white men[1] started dying of rare opportunistic diseases, it caught the attention of the medical community. If you read the timeline that I linked, and if you read the rest of the article that you linked, I think you would agree that it seems pretty clear that people who were not affluent, urban gay white men, were dying of AIDS for decades before the first cases were identified.

Low income people, people of color, people outside of urban centers, or those without good access to healthcare, people in third world countries, isolated cases of some exceptionally rare disease isolated first world communities, none of these cases raised red flags.

HIV is most easily passed by gay men because the act of anal sex causes tearing in the anus, which leads to a much more effective bodily transmission. Blood and semen exchange more readily that way. Far more readily than in heterosexual sex. It can still be spread by heterosexual sex, however.

None of that has the slightest bit to do with what caused it in the first place. You are confusing the population in which it spread most rapidly with the origin of the condition here. This would be like saying the bubonic plague was caused by people who live close to each other in poor hygienic conditions, when in reality it started with rats, and fleas bit the rats, and then they bit the people. Living close to someone with it is how it spread after that.

I still don't understand what you mean when you say they caused it. Are you saying that the act of loving another person of the same sex somehow spawned a deadly virus? Or that the act of homosexual sex somehow created it?

It's poorly concealed undercover homophobic sperm in search of a lost ovum of doubt Basically a long shot at conceiving a deformed morality of guilt.And the coveted prize (even just for trying) is a little dollop of grace dropped from the sky.

I think that the only reason we managed to identify the condition as fast as we did is because HIV spread quickly in the gay community. In other words, the promiscuity of a small group saved virtually everyone on the planet by making us more readily aware of a dangerous virus with no immediate symptoms, virtually no natural immunity, and an extremely bleak long-term prognosis.

No. As the linked article makes clear, and multiple lines of research have confirmed, what we now call AIDS originated as a simian immunodeficiency virus strain that managed to infect humans. The precise details may never be known, but AFAIK the "hunter theory" has the most going for it.

As terrible as the toll of AIDS has been, at least we have the tools to detect and combat it. Imagine if it had managed to get widely spread a hundred years ago...

holybuckets, when quoting you are required to indicate that in some fashion. If you can't figure out how to type [ quote ] before the quote then [/ quote ] after it (without the spaces inside the brackets) then you should use old fashioned "quotes".

To everyone else: holybuckets entire first post of the thread was a quote from the website he provide the link to in that post. The wording of the poll seems to be the only orignal content from him. The website goes on to expand upon those opening remarks and includes the various origin theories as well as a timeline. The site is labeled as a HIV/AIDS charity.

IMO holybuckets did the poll to jerk our chains - not to have a real discussion. I'm guessing I'm not alone in that opinion.

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Faith must trample under foot all reason, sense, and understanding. - Martin Luther

It's a bit like the 'Spanish' flu, ain't it? That got called 'Spanish' because Spain was the only country to report on it. All the others were still engaged in the First Big Mistake and you don't want the other side to know that your soldiers are dropping like flies.So, apparently, this flu seemed to coming from Spain.Same here with the gays. HIV/AIDS was (in the US) first detected in gays. So, gays must have caused it, right?If ZZ Top had been the first people with HIV, it might have been called Beard Related Immune Deficiency.

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Science: I'll believe it when I see itFaith: I'll see it when I believe it

I have not paid particular attention to most of HB's participation in this forum, but this is the second time I have seen him completely misunderstand the content of text that is right in front of him, and then cite the text to support an argument that is in no way related to the arguments made in the text that he cites.

The website that he links to speaks extensively about the evolution of the virus, and presents current (and even some controversial) theories about the origins of the epidemic. But none of those theories represents gay men as the cause of the epidemic, as HB's poll suggests. The website itself is for an international AIDS advocacy group, and the site is full of quizzes on sexuality and AIDS and safer sex and condom use.

The previous time that HB cited an article to back up an argument, it was a scholarly journal piece examining socially culturally appropriate methods of treating mental illness among different social groups. Atheists with mental illness were cited as a group whose needs were not being addressed in the majority of studies. HB decided that the author was arguing that atheism is a mental illness, completely misunderstanding the article.

At first I thought he was just plain out lying. But I'm coming to think that HB has some sort of learning disability which causes him to zoom in and hyper focus on minutia within text, embellish that minutia with previously held biases that do not exist within the text, and then promote his biases while citing the non-relevant, out of context minutia. At the same time, he seems to completely fail to see the obvious main points within the text that he is citing.

I find myself getting really angry at HB. But it is really not his fault that he has poor reading comprehension.

At first I thought he was just plain out lying. But I'm coming to think that HB has some sort of learning disability which causes him to zoom in and hyper focus on minutia within text, embellish that minutia with previously held biases that do not exist within the text, and then promote his biases while citing the non-relevant, out of context minutia. At the same time, he seems to completely fail to see the obvious main points within the text that he is citing.

"When we landed on the moon, that was the point where god should have come up and said 'hello'. Because if you invent some creatures, put them on the blue one and they make it to the grey one, you f**king turn up and say 'well done'."